Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Sauce

A basic tomato sauce made with stewed or fresh tomatoes, flour, butter, sugar, cloves, allspice, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. If using fresh tomatoes, stew them with the spices for 20 minutes.

  2. If using stewed tomatoes, heat them thoroughly.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine wire sieve to remove seeds.

Make the sauce

  1. Add sugar, salt, pepper, and combine flour and butter into a cream.

  2. Stir the cream mixture into the sauce and boil for a moment while stirring continuously.

  3. Serve hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, flavour and liquid of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and stirred into the liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and helps make a smooth cream with the flour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter cream into the sauce. Flour thickens only when heated, and added raw it can clump. Stirring continuously while boiling briefly keeps the sauce smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, clove, allspice, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, clove, allspice, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More tomato sauce recipes

Green 40Beef in 13Eggs in 13French 8Sweetbreads in 7Spiced 6 See all 512 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes